A Murder Waiting to Happen

Murder mysteries set at science fiction, mystery and comic book conventions are proliferatingrecent years have seen Purtill's Murdercon , Marshall's Sci-Fi and McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun. The first was Mack Reynold's 1954 Case of the Little Green Men , and the latest is this novel, set at a Minnesota SF convention where war games are played in the hallways and stairwells, with real-looking weapons. Inevitably, one of the guns used is more real than realistic, and a universally disliked charactera bully and a sadistis shot through the heart. Joe Ja mison, engineer and UFO expert, tells the story and plays Watson to his friend, ex-cop Mack Forrester, the convention's security chief. Despite the overt zaniness of many of the characters, Taylor fails to give them life, and it's all rather dull, if competently done. (Feb.)